Death Row Fatty

In case you thought the slow-crawl of death row was a new thing, here's the story of one Donald Snyder:

In the early 1950s, Donald Snyder was serving time in New York’s Green Haven Correctional Facility for auto theft. He escaped, but police were almost immediately on his trail. Snyder decided he would take a hostage that he could use to bargain his way out of going back to jail, and he kidnapped a 9-year-old girl.

In a standoff, police surrounded Snyder and fired at him, and the criminal stabbed his hostage in the abdomen, killing her. He was recaptured, convicted of murder and sent to Sing Sing to await execution by the electric chair.

Snyder knew he wouldn’t be able to escape from Sing Sing’s death row, so he came up with a new plan: He would eat his way out of execution. He figured that if he was too fat to squeeze into the electric chair, the state couldn’t execute him and they’d have to commute his sentence to life in prison.

So a convicted felon killed a little girl, presumably with several cops as witnesses. Prolly fried the next week, right? Especially back in the olden days?

Apparently not, since this happened:

He began to eat everything he could get his hands on, and ballooned from 150 pounds to more than 300.

Whaaaaaaaaat???!?!?  I mean, 1950 prison food - gruel - how long must it take some fucker to double his weight from 150 to 300? Wtf?

And yes, he died in the chair in the end. Fried. Of course. That shit'll kill you, after all.

And of course you already know my own death row meal.